Light Keeper - Part 2

So, Light Keeper came out of a collaboration with myself, Wayne Garrett and Studio North. And all of us share an interest in light and the phenomenology of light. And so that was actually where the seed of the idea was planted, was just in light, the very basic aspect of the universe. And so, when you looked at the call for public art in Aitken Place Park we looked very much at the site which is unique in that it’s so close to the massive waters of Lake Ontario. Something that’s interesting about this lake is that it’s actually big enough that there is a tide on the lake. So, it corresponds to the moon in the sky. And so, our very first kind of concept was around the moon and the tides, which is sort of what Light Keeper came out of, the moon and the tides. So, the waves of course, the rainbow waves are what we think of as the replacement of the tides. And then the moon projection is of course the moon pulling on the tides.

And the moon for me, I think, is a really interesting symbol in so far as it feels very intimate. So, the sun feels like, you know, it’s the source of life truly on earth. And it’s this great sort of elemental ball of burning gas in the sky. But the moon somehow feels like it’s just for you no matter who you are. And so, there’s this public intimacy that we were hoping to draw from with Light Keeper. And it’s a very quiet public artwork compared to some. But the hope is that it could create these, sort of, momentary experiences for just a few people at a time. So, when you stand in this park at night it really feels like this moon and these rainbows are kind of, they’re kind of just for you like They’re this small offering to the viewer, and they come with great beauty, but also great stillness. You take a moment to be still with that light that moves around you. And that’s our favourite thing about Light Keeper, that it comes with a great deal of quiet.

For us, public space is so different than working in a studio, it’s so different than working in a gallery. The thing that we’re most intrigued about is actually the uncertainty that comes with it and the surprises of working in spaces that are impacted by the people that move through them. There will always be somebody who does something with your artwork that you could never have anticipated. And so, it’s this idea of actually constantly rupturing and rearticulating your expectations of public space. Art does something different than infrastructure, it does something different than architecture, it does something different than design. And even though there’s overlap and intersections between all of those things in public space, public art actually is able to talk about things in a slightly different way than any of those other things are. Which is part of why it’s such a privilege I think to work as an artist in public space. You know, we can say things that maybe haven’t already been said by other aspects of the built environment. 2:55